Through his life story and the individual destinies of relatives and friends, beginning some 50 years before the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, former diplomat, journalist, and television producer Bato Tomaševic's vivid memoir recounts Yugoslavia's numerous political upheavals and the harrowing experiences of two World Wars. From his upbringing in a Montenegrin family in Italian- and German-occupied Cetinje, Tomaševic tells a story of hardships and daily executions, the heroism of underground fighters, and the effects of occupation on an ordinary family. He recounts joining Tito's partisans in World War II, studying law in Belgrade and Exeter, and becoming a Yugoslav diplomat in London—during which time he accompanied the Manchester United football team to Belgrade and survived the 1958 Munich air crash. Tomaševic returned to Belgrade to work as a journalist and publisher, and later headed the anti-nationalistic YUTEL federal television channel, before it was bombed out of existence. He describes the breakup of the Federation after Tito's death and the efforts by Serbian and Croatian nationalists to create a Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia through aggression and ethnic cleansing. Tomaševic's saga ends with NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the imprisonment of President Miloševic. Often tragic, always fascinating, and at times comic, his story parallels the history of Yugoslavia, characterized by inescapable violence and brutal conflict.